Appliances of various kinds are well known in the prior art. Such appliances tend, in general, to effect any of a wide variety of actions that increase human productivity, safety, comfort, and/or convenience. Increasingly, many appliances have a communications capability to permit the appliance to transmit information (such as status information regarding itself) and/or to receive information (such as instructions to be acted upon).
There exists, however, no accepted universal communications protocol by which all such appliances conduct such communications. Instead, manufacturers make use of any of a variety of available standards (such as, for example X10 and ZigBee) or alternative (sometimes proprietary) approaches that they license or otherwise themselves acquire or devise (such as, for example, Z-Wave and MyQ). As a result, at least some of the various appliances available at a typical modern facility (such as a residence) will utilize incompatible protocols to support their respective inbound or outbound communications.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.